punishment

punishment:

see capital punishmentcapital punishment,imposition of a penalty of death by the state. History

Capital punishment was widely applied in ancient times; it can be found (c.1750 B.C.) in the Code of Hammurabi......Click the link for more information.; corporal punishmentcorporal punishment,physical chastisement of an offender. At one extreme it includes the death penalty (see capital punishment), but the term usually refers to punishments like flogging, caning, mutilation, and branding. Until c......Click the link for more information.; criminal lawcriminal law,the branch of law that defines crimes, treats of their nature, and provides for their punishment. A tort is a civil wrong committed against an individual; a crime, on the other hand, is regarded as an offense committed against the public, even though only one.....Click the link for more information.; prisonprison,place of confinement for the punishment and rehabilitation of criminals. By the end of the 18th cent. imprisonment was the chief mode of punishment for all but capital crimes......Click the link for more information..

Punishment

a measure of coercion applied by a court in the name of the state as a penalty for commission of a crime.

The idea of punishment arose in ancient times. It did not exist in preclass society as a means of state coercion but operated instead on the principle of the blood feud, that is, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Forced labor, one of the earliest types of punishment, appeared in slaveholding society. With the spread of Christianity came the idea that punishment led to atonement for sins, a concept that took its first legal form in canon law. In the 18th century this idea became fixed in criminal laws and codes. The primary purpose of punishment was considered to be deterrence. Measures of punishment were accordingly extremely cruel and included the death penalty, mutilation, and corporal punishment.

After the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, bourgeois ideologists advanced the proposition that the purpose of punishment was the safety of society. Yet punishment in bourgeois criminal law continued above all to be a means of vengeance. This was shown in the establishment of various prison systems that were intended to violate the human dignity of those confined and cause them moral and physical suffering. The repressive nature of punishment under bourgeois criminal law was revealed in its harshest form during the period of fascism in Germany and Italy, where punishment operated as a device of terror.

In the capitalist states during the 19th and 20th centuries, the nature of punishment has changed somewhat. The corrective function of punishment has been proposed in abstract form and some liberalization of prison conditions has taken place. Types of confinement in which punishment is combined with education, with study of the personality of the prisoner, and with psychotherapy have been introduced, particularly for juvenile offenders. Systems of “noninstitutional” custody, which do not include imprisonment, have been implemented. All these innovations are linked to the search for ways to combat the steady growth of crime in capitalist society, and are a result of the struggle of the working people in the capitalist countries for democratization of the criminal justice system. In principle, however, such measures cannot change the role and significance of punishment as a means of vengeance and suppression of the personality.

In the USSR, the content and purposes of punishment are set down in Article 20 of the Basic Principles of Criminal Legislation of the USSR and the Union Republics and in Articles One and Two of the Basic Principles of Corrective Labor Legislation of the USSR and the Union Republics. Among the purposes of punishment are correction and reeducation of convicted offenders, prevention of further crimes they might commit (specific or special prevention), and prevention of crimes by other persons (general prevention). The principal means of correction and reeducation include the conditions under which the punishment is served, participation by convicted offenders in socially useful labor, political education, and general educational and vocational-technical training. The social significance of punishment lies in its function within the complex set of social measures designed to prevent crime.

The punishment provided by law for a given crime can be imposed on guilty persons only on the sentence of a court. The Basic Principles of Criminal Legislation establishes certain rules for the imposition of punishment, which are primarily intended to affirm general principles for selecting punishment. From among the sanctions available under the law, the court selects the type and amount of punishment that match the crime committed. Here the court considers the nature and degree of social danger inherent in the crime committed, the character of the offender, and any circumstances of the case that mitigate or aggravate criminal accountability. Soviet criminal law ensures individualization of punishment, that is, selection of precisely that measure of punishment that is sufficient to ensure that the goals of punishment are achieved, particularly the correction and reeducation of the criminal. The availability of a variety of punishments is an essential condition for individualizing punishment.

The Basic Principles of Criminal Legislation contain a definitive list of available measures of punishment. These include deprivation of freedom (confinement), exile (to a certain place), banishment (from a certain place), corrective labor without deprivation of freedom, loss of the right to occupy certain positions or to engage in certain activities, fines, public reprimand, confiscation of property, and loss of military or other special rank. Active-duty servicemen may also be assigned to a disciplinary battalion to serve their punishment. The criminal codes of the Union republics also provide such punishments as dismissal from a position held, imposition of an obligation to compensate for damages criminally caused, and loss of parental rights.

All measures of punishment are divided into primary and supplementary, with the latter used to amplify the former. Deprivation of freedom, corrective labor without deprivation of freedom, public reprimand, and assignment to a disciplinary battalion are considered primary punishments. Exile, banishment, loss of the right to occupy certain positions or engage in certain activities, fines, dismissal from a position, and imposition of the obligation to compensate damages may be imposed as either primary or supplementary punishments. Confiscation of property, loss of military or special rank, and (in the criminal codes of most of the Union republics) loss of parental rights can only be supplementary punishments. A court that imposes a supplementary punishment in addition to a primary one does so in order to increase the punishment.

The supreme form of punishment, namely, the death penalty, is not part of the general system of punishment. The law considers the death penalty to be an extraordinary measure—pending its complete abolition in the future, it is to be used on a temporary basis, and only in cases specially provided by law.

Soviet law proceeds from the presumption that punishment is employed only for actual crimes and only in those cases where other measures of influence on violators of the law have been inadequate.

What does it mean when you dream about punishment?

Punishment in a dream reflects guilt or shame about some actions committed by the dreamer. Even if the punishment is being inflicted upon someone else, the dreamer is most probably “feeling” the punishment as well.

There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature -- whatever be the delinquencies of the individual -- no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do.

This speech was immediately published throughout the kingdom; nor did any thing terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his majesty's mercy; because it was observed, that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent.

I am here because I carried the joke too far with a couple of cousins of mine, and with a couple of other cousins who were none of mine; in short, I carried the joke so far with them all that it ended in such a complicated increase of kindred that no accountant could make it clear: it was all proved against me, I got no favour, I had no money, I was near having my neck stretched, they sentenced me to the galleys for six years, I accepted my fate, it is the punishment of my fault; I am a young man; let life only last, and with that all will come right.

In short, so operative were the terrors that surrounded them, that of twenty-four young men, who deserted from a transport, twenty-two were glad to return of themselves, the others being shot by sentinels; and one of their friends, who was supposed to have been accessory to their escape, was carried on shore to behold the destruction of his house and effects, which were burned in his presence, as a punishment for his temerity and perfidious aid to his comrades.

She hoped to marry him, and they continued together till she was obliged to be convinced that such hope was vain, and till the disappointment and wretchedness arising from the conviction rendered her temper so bad, and her feelings for him so like hatred, as to make them for a while each other's punishment, and then induce a voluntary separation.

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